I joined the school band in sixth grade, and I liked it well enough. I was a decent saxophonist, perhaps overzealous (which got me into trouble with my first director, Mr. Stickupmyass) but enjoying the music we were playing and the chance to learn a new fun skill.

It wasn't until ninth grade, when I joined the La Cueva High School Big Bad Bear Marching Band, that I found my true love.

Marching band was, to me, the perfect marriage of music and choreography. After all, how many dancers can claim that they're actually playing the music to which they're moving? I loved it right away -- maybe because it was more difficult, maybe because I was working harder than I ever had in my life ... maybe because I was good at it. In fact, I won the first drill-down competition I ever participated in.

For the uninitiated, a drill-down is a set of commands called to a block formation. You execute the commands until you make a mistake, at which point you fall out of the block and cheer for the people better than you.

We didn't have a drill-down until band week was nearly over, so we knew all the commands. Or at least we should have. Granted, the competition lasted a lot longer than subsequent drill-downs earlier in following band camps. But it was down to me, a senior, and three juniors when Julie, our drum major, called "oblique left march."

Unhesitatingly, I snapped 45 degrees to my left in full stride, pointed my imaginary horn to the imaginary box, and kept marching at eight steps to the next yard line. The other four competitors stopped and looked at each other, confused, understanding that we wouldn't be doing obliques this year. But I'd learned it, I'd done it, and I'd become the first freshman to win a drill-down since the school's inaugural year when there were no seniors.

It wasn't my last first. The next year, I was the first sophomore section leader the school had ever seen. I was the first kid to challenge my way from last chair all the way to first. I was the first section leader who hadn't been in private lessons for most of his life. And I was the first saxophonist to be the favorite student of our notoriously short-fused band director.

What carried me through four years of high school marching band and five years of college athletic bands, more than God-given talent or long hours of practice, was heart. I loved playing, I loved the groups, I loved the raucous audiences, and I loved the feeling of working my ass off to totally rock a crowd's face. It was that love that kept me coming back, and it's that love that's making me try again.

Granted, it's on baritone bugle now -- I'm learning a whole new instrument. But with my new drum corps and our vision for the future -- a bunch of people who share my heart and my motivation -- it can't be anything less than great.